CABLE CUB

In 1993, the Cubs finally joined the cable TV revolution—but in a measured, conservative, Tribunesque way. Because of local TV blackouts necessitated by MLB’s new ESPN contract, the Cubs needed a new outlet for Wednesday night games. Therefore, the Tribune elected to transfer the contests to their CLTV outlet, a 24-hour local news channel. CLTV continued to show Cubs games through 1998, when Fox Sports set up a channel in Chicago.

By that time, however, the Cubs had lost Harry.

After young Josh Lewin, formerly with Baltimore, spent 1997 helping out as a play-by-play man in the Cubs booth, he was forced out; it is believed that Harry pushed Lewin off the job to make way for his own grandson Chip, at that time announcing with the Seattle Mariners.

But despite Chip being hired for 1998, the family arrangement never came to pass. After broadcasting Cubs games for 15 seasons, Harry Caray passed away on February 18, 1998. His age was given as 84.

Caray’s death, which received in Chicago the attention that one would have expected for a head of state, marked another decline in the television booth. Chip Caray, excitable and pleasant but not particularly distinctive or knowledgeable, never really won the fans over in Chicago (which might have been an inevitable fate for anyone succeeding Harry).

Fill-in play-by-play man Wayne Larrivee, a football and basketball announcer who worked Cubs games on weekends, was barely competent at baseball and unpleasant listening to boot.

As a tribute to Caray, his signature singing of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” continued between the top and bottom of the seventh. But instead of using a tape of Harry, or simply letting the fans sing the song, the Cubs’ marketing director, John McDonough, chose instead to turn it into an opportunity to associate the team with b- and c-level celebrities.

The noxious “Celebrity seventh-inning stretch,” which has continued since early 1998, tends to feature an uncomfortably high amount of actors and actresses associated with: 1) WGN television programs, 2) WGN radio programs, and 3) various non-baseball sports.

Meanwhile, in 2000, Stone, came down with a nearly fatal case of a heart disease called valley fever and missed most of the season, with former players Randy Hundley, Bob Dernier, and Dave Otto filling in uncomfortably.

In 2001, with Stone retiring to regain his health, Otto took over on cable telecasts, while Joe Carter began a disastrous two-year stretch for contests aired on WGN and WCIU, a local UHF channel that took over some broadcasts as WGN continued to divest itself of Cubs baseball.

WGN became a member of the nationwide WB television network in the late 1990s, and taking on the fledgling organization’s schedule of prime-time programming meant that Cubs games had to be shifted elsewhere. Most of the contests went over to cable, with a handful to low-rated WCIU.

To make things worse, after winning the Wild-Card playoff berth in 1998, the team went back into the toilet for a few years. But the team and the telecasts improved in 2003; Stone returned, casting Carter and Otto into the wilderness, and the Cubs came within five outs of going to the World Series before losing the NLCS to the surprising Florida Marlins.